


Cheiloproclitic

by redemptivs (orderandsophism)



Series: Max and Furiosa Are Bad at Everything [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluffy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:33:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6350089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orderandsophism/pseuds/redemptivs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt:<br/>Cheiloproclitic - Being attracted to someones lips.</p><p>Max got a purty mouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheiloproclitic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ghostsjogging](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostsjogging/gifts).



Max sits like a stone between her parted knees, hunched over like some great repentant beast. The static buzz of the clippers is the only noise between them, but it is an eerily comfortable silence in which lies no expectation or intent. 

Her hand smooths over his scalp, brushing any last bits of shorn hair away and ensuring it is all even. Gingerly, as gently as she is able, her fingers sweep at his shoulders, marking the broadness and where the tan of his skin fades abruptly to something paler. It seems bracingly clandestine, to see what not even the light has seen. But she commits the warmth of his skin and the range of his spine and the words etched in fading ink to memory, and prays she’ll never forget.

“There,” she says, turning off the clippers and dusting the shavings from his shoulders.

Max runs a hand through his hair, grunting an approval.

“Good?” she asks, already winding the cord around the clippers to store them away. 

“Do you think …?” His voice is grit, his tongue is thick with disuse. “Do you mind?”

He motions to his shaggy beard, and she understands. “Sure,” she agrees with a small smile, tugging at a lock of his beard playfully before plugging the clippers into the small generator again. 

In no time at all, Max is divested of his beard, which lays in colubrine pieces on the floor, draped delicately over Furiosa’s knees. “How’s that feel?” she asks, scratching lightly at his cheeks. “Still woolly. Just a little less woolly.”

Max rubs his chin with one hand, looking perplexed. “Could really go for a shave,” he mumbles wistfully, and Furiosa is only too happy to oblige, retrieving Rictus’ old shave kit from the chest by her bedside. 

She wants him to remember these creature comforts. Wants him to remember how good it is, how uncomplicated and how voluptuous life could be here. Because if he must go, if he must leave again, he’ll know what kind of home awaits him.

“Here,” she says, handing him the kit. “Should have everything there. Nice stuff, too. The only thing is I don’t have a mirror handy.”

Max accepts it, is thoughtful for a brief moment, before pushing it back into her hands. “Then you have to do it,” he declares, nodding earnestly. “Mm.”

Furiosa gives him an unsure look before resuming her seat on the rock-cum-chair and motioning for him to come closer. He faces her this time, elbows resting carelessly on her thighs as he turns his face up for her scrutiny.

She laughs at the innocent puppydog eyes he’s giving her, a loud, effusive, uninhibited laugh that’s a stranger to her bones, that throws her head back and echoes against the rock. Max laughs, too, a quiet sound through his nose, and he grins up at her, childlike, and it’s the simplest happiness Furiosa has ever wanted to know.

The renascent moment settles, and she cups his face in her hand, calloused thumb running along his cheek affectionately. Then she raises his chin, applying the thick oil scented with the chilled earthiness of eucalyptus and the affable sweetness of paperbark. She does her best to massage it into his skin, taking her time to do so thoroughly. The shaving cream is easier, and she builds the lather until it’s the thickest foam. She applies it with meticulous precision to his face and neck, until she’s satisfied he’s covered completely.

She reaches for the leather strop and holds one end with her hand, the other end clamped down beneath her boot. She sharpens the blade and tests it on her thumb, before holding it up to his cheek. “You sure?” she asks, and he grunts softly.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Without a mirror, I’d just muck it up.”

“What makes you think I won’t?” 

He looks up at her blankly. “Because I trust you.”

It’s enough to stop her heart for the briefest of moments, and she shudders at his blind faith in her. What makes him think he can get off saying things like this to her when he’s been gone for all these hundreds of days, like nothing at all had changed, and return to act as though moments like these were so natural between them?

“Alright,” she mutters, trying not to sound so very pleased. “Just remember if I cut your nose off, I didn’t mean to, and you asked me to do this, and it’s really all your fault.” 

Max gives another laugh through his nose and smiles, says nothing. So Furiosa continues, scraping the blade down his cheek in slow, clean motion. She worries she might be pulling the skin too hard with her mechanical fingers, but Max makes no complaint. She relaxes as she passes a hand over his face, satisfied he’s as smooth as she can manage.

“There you are,” she says softly, grinning as she wipes off the excess lather with a cool, wet cloth. “That’s the Max I remember. More or less.”

He smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners in charming fashion.

“Oh, wait …” She thumbs a little spot of shaving cream from the corner of his mouth and is surprised to find his lips are softer than she’s supposed they’d be. Smoother. Gently cracked from the garish sun and the arid wind and the elements, but they’re moist and full and parted just so …

She swallows hard.

“Thanks, Furi,” he says, making no move to extract himself from her grasp. 

She watches him form the name on his lips, and it almost looks like a kiss. The way his lips round then pull back into a half smile, it’s distracting, and she catches herself staring.

“Of course,” she whispers with a weak smile, pushing herself up to standing. “Anytime.” 

There are many names Furiosa has been called in her lifetime. None have been as familiar as that epithet. He says it as though he’s said it all his life. He says it as though he has a right to that intimacy, and by god, he does. 

Also there are many things that have compelled her: coercion and duress, rage and the immolation of revenge. But nothing so imperative and irresistible as her name on his lips.

His name for her. On his lips.

She develops a fascination to earn her name again that finds her tacitly attempting to learn his quotidian schedule. Or what she thinks is his schedule. He’s not a creature of habit, but one of fragmentary need. He wakes when he’s inclined to, eats when he is hungry, works until he feels sleepy, and none of these events happen with any systematicity. So when she comes upon him in the corridors, she waits with baited breath for his greeting: a lopsided smile and a soft “Hey, Furi,” and she’s a torrent of confusion.

She wants to claim that mouth, but is unsure why or how.

-

“You want to kiss him,” Cheedo points out, late one night. 

The sisters are all lounging around their quarters, taking turns dandling The Dag’s little daughter in their laps. They’re all giving her furtive, knowing glances, even Cheedo, and it’s the first time Furiosa feels neophyte before them.

“What?” she asks, frowning disbelief at their patronizing smiles. 

“Kiss him,” she repeats simply, then leans over Toast’s lap to give the baby a fat smacking kiss on the cheek. She stumbles over with a little laugh and throws her arm around Furiosa’s neck and does the same, and Furiosa laughs as well, patting her back with the indulgent affection one gives an overzealous dog.

“I don’t think so,” Furiosa says, as Cheedo pulls away to settle back against the rock next to The Dag. 

“Well, not like that,” the girl points out with a rakish smile. “Like the way lovers do.”

Furiosa frowns, because what does Cheedo know of what lovers do? But she marks the way the girl reaches for The Dag’s hand, their fingers lacing with a predicted complication, and Furiosa realizes in the way her heart sinks there are microcosms of things she’s never known. 

She’s blushing madly now, and she gets up and mutters a goodbye, trampling back to the vault where she plans to curl up in her bed and sequester herself in a tangle of sheets. 

Except he’s there. Standing by the small natatorium, feet bare, sleeves pushed up past his elbows, and his whole visage brightens at her arrival. She winces; it’s almost like looking directly into the sun. But he’s before her in a breath, grasping her hands and grinning as freely as a fool. “Close your eyes,” he instructs, and she does so, but only after a peremptory look of doubt. 

But he leads her a short distance, releases her hands and instructs her to stay. A click and the sound of scraping and a man sings in a lazy rubato, over a warm-timbred piano, and she opens her eyes in confusion. 

“I found it,” he explains, gesturing to the gramophone and the stack of LPs leaning against it. He notes her unwavering perturbation, and grins wide. “A few months ago. Fixed it up. It plays music. This was an oldie even when I was a kid. I thought maybe …”

His eyes question but he waits for no answer as he catches up her hand and winds an arm around her waist, pulling her as close as he dares. She stiffens in his grasp, but nearly goes slack at the want in her skin, and she closes the gap between them, pressing herself to him.

He holds her hand so firmly, so sure, his other hand slipping down the vale of her spine, catching on the lacings of her garter, until his fingers are pressed proprietorially at the small of her back. They fold into each other like two halves that have never forgotten what it is to be whole. 

He moves, and she moves with him, in time to the music. She’s sure she’s awkward, but she does her best to follow him, and in time she forgets the movement of her feet and the sway of her hips, and falls into an instinctive union with him. Without thinking, she inclines her head, pressing her forehead to his, and he laughs.

“No fair,” he huffs, pulling a fantastic pout. 

She realizes she’s a palm width taller than him, her already-towering height augmented by her thick boots, his lilliputian one diminished by the lack of his. But he’s grinning up at her with uninhibited candor, raises himself up on his toes. His hand slips down to her hips, pressing into the leather of her belt, and he’s too close now. Her throat goes dry with a literal thirst, and she wants so much to taste an nebulous something, something she cannot name, and the longing of saudade maddening as he nears.

And then his hand at her hip pushes her away, and she gives a little cry of surprise, but he tugs her back in, turning her under his arm and catching her up in his arms again. She’s laughing with bewilderment and embarrassment, glad she hadn’t made a fool of herself and tripped spectacularly over his feet. But none of that matters, not when he’s so close and solid and there’s an expectation in his eyes she cannot fathom or discern. 

She hates that she’s benighted in these matters. She hates that she has a distinct want for something so indistinct, that she is so utterly consumed with a need for repletion she has never known, hates the frustration of not knowing how she is to gain it. 

Her thoughts are stopped when Max strains to press his lips to the corner of her mouth, and her eyes flit closed and her whole form is overcome with a frission of unfamiliar happiness. But also there is a preternatural calm that descends upon her as she opens her eyes to regard him and his open smile. She dips her head and kisses him hard, a tentative gesture that is masked by the indelicacy of its execution. It feels almost like a plea, until his lips part and he kisses her back.

And Furiosa sighs, sated. Because she has never known a peace like this. Because nothing has ever stilled the the serrated loneliness that pierces her resolve now and again. Because she knows a repose that comes only when it is shared with another. Because now she knows what it is that lovers do.


End file.
